A heavily annotated cocktail napkin found stuffed into an empty Martini glass at a Muslim topless bar in Chicago's notorious Loop, say aides to Republican presidential candidate John McCain, is "the complete, shocking" list of a prospective Obama administration cabinet, scrawled by the hand of the Democratic presidential hopeful himself.
Typical of the revelations is Obama's alleged selection as head of Homeland Security: the ex-underground bomb-maker and domestic terrorist William Ayers.
“He intends to ram through American citizenship for Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe and make him secretary of state. And his secretary of the treasury? Jane Fonda!"
"Not only that," the G.O.P. operative charged, "but this four-by-four inch paper bombshell reveals that Obama's secretary of defense is slated to be the current head of the Girl Scouts of America. He intends to ram through American citizenship for Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe and make him secretary of state. And his secretary of the treasury? Jane Fonda!"
Is this an explosive scoop or a crude forgery? Experts, dividing along party lines, disagree. Skeptical Democrats' dismissal of the so-called "smoking napkin" as a pathetic last-ditch Republican attempt to panic Obama supporters into switching to McCain was refuted by the Arizona senator's camp. "The fact that it is written in Obama's distinctive Swahili-Arabic dialect, and that a P.S. at the bottom reads, 'C.C. to Al Qaeda, the ACORN Project, the World Socialist Congress & the Taliban,' are further proof or its authenticity," say the McCain loyalists.
“Furthermore," the Republican defenders argue, "the resident phrenologist, graphologist and astrologer at the Independent People Against Liberal Perverts think-tank have all separately determined that it looks exactly like something you'd expect a jug-eared un-American first-term senator with suspicious ties to anti-poverty cells and not a single hand gun in his home would come up with."
Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin immediately sided with the accusers, declaring to an audience of big-game hunters: "Obama should be sent to Gitmo over there in Iraq, where Americanism stands proud and free, at least for those who are still alive, and he better cut it out or I'm a monkey's uncle!"